Raghuram Rajan: belief

Transcript context

…If you were to cite a particular place in India that right now is doing community especially well, what would it be? The villages, by and large, are self-governing, have been self-governing for many, many decades. But I think what you really need is, over and above that, you need the funding that accumulates at the center, or the state level, to come down to the community level, so they can decide what kinds of irrigation projects, for example, that they need. A lot of it is local. It’s not these mega, gigantic projects which create a whole lot of problems. It’s about local tanks, local wells. And there are many areas where, once the local people take it up and have the funding associated with it, they actually do a great job of doing the right things as far as irrigation, as far as the environment, as far as everything local community needs. But if people are leaving villages in India or, for that matter, in America, isn’t that a sign they’re rejecting community in some sense? They find it too stifling? They prefer the anonymous, impersonal existence of the big city?…

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